Pity Transformed

"Pity Transformed" is an examination of how pity was imagined and expressed in classical antiquity. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the pity of the Greeks and Romans differed from modern ideas. Among the topics investigated in this study are the appeal to pity in courts of law and the connection between pity and desert; the relation between pity and love or intimacy; self-pity; the role of pity in war and its relation to human rights and human dignity; divine pity from paganism to Christianity; and why pity was considered an emotion. This book will lead readers to ponder how the Greeks and Romans were both like and unlike us in this fundamental area of cultural sensibility.

David Konstan is John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. His publications include Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres; Greek Comedy and Ideology; and Friendship in the Classical World. He has translated two volumes in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series published by Bloomsbury.